The time stretcher function can be a time savior and in the same time it can give you more natural way of “searching” for the right spots for smoothing your animations. Instead of trying to work with one keyframe at the time you can use it to observe the behavior of entire “net” of keyframes.
I am reviewing in few steps two different ways to use it. The first one in within the Spline Graph Editor and the second one is into the Keyframes Graph Editor.
The time stretcher function seems to be pretty handy and useful. Its purpose is to allow to you to manipulate selected keyframes in relative relation between the selected keyframes and these keyframes which are neighbor to them. In short let’s say you have 10 keyframes arranged in chronological direction. And you want to select the last 2 (9 and 10) to manipulate them. The eight will change too because it’s neighbor to the ninth. The rest of the keyframes(1,2,3,4,5,6,7) will stay the same.
In the following example I have done short bouncing title animation. And I want to try, seek and experiment with new positions for certain keyframes. => I can use the time stretching function. I have marked the last 2 keyframes on the blue graph and click the icon with the two arrows which are pointing in opposite directions. (On the screenshot I have indicated it with the red arrow)
The two vertical lines indicate the “region” of operation of the time stretcher. Now it’s time for experiment and looking for the desired result.
In the keyframes graph editor it’s pretty much the same operation. You have to choose the desired keyframes for manipulation. Select them and click on the same icon. Drag and experiment until you are happy with the final result.
Amusika 